Underground music

accessible to everyone at the click of a mouse. One expert, Martin Raymond, of London based company The
Future Laboratory commented in an article in The Independent, saying trends in music, art and politics are:
... now transmitted laterally and collaboratively via the internet. You once had a series of
gatekeepers in the adoption of a trend: the innovator, the early adopter, the late adopter, the
early mainstream, the late mainstream, and nally the conservative. But now it goes straight
from the innovator to the mainstream.
In eect, this means a boy band (for instance) could be
inuenced by a (formerly) obscure 1960s garage rock,
early 1980s post punk, noise rock acts like Pussy Galore
or even composers of avant-garde classical music such as
John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, while maintaining
recognisability as a boy band.[1]

1 Overview
Underground Music

The term underground music has been applied to various artistic movements, for instance the psychedelic music movement of the mid-1960s, but the term has in more
recent decades come to be dened by any musicians who
tend to avoid the trappings of the mainstream commercial music industry otherwise it tells only truth through
the music. Frank Zappa attempted to dene underground by noting that the mainstream comes to you,
but you have to go to the underground. In the 1960s,
the term underground was associated with the hippie
counterculture of young people who had dropped out of
college and their middle class life to live in an o-the-grid
commune of free love and cannabis. In modern popular
music, the term underground refers to performers or
bands ranging from artists that do DIY guerrilla concerts
and self-recorded shows to those that are signed to small
independent labels. In some musical styles, the term underground is used to assert that the content of the music
is illegal or controversial, as in the case of early 1990s
death metal bands in the US such as Cannibal Corpse for
their gory cover art and lyrical themes. Black metal is also
an underground form of music and its Norwegian scene
are notorious for their association with church burnings,
the occult, murders and their Anti-Christian views. All
of extreme metal is considered underground music for its
extreme nature.

Underground music comprises musical genres beyond

mainstream culture. Any song that is not being legally
commercialized is considered underground. Such music
may tend to express common ideals, such as high regard
for sincerity and intimacy, freedom of creative expression
as opposed to the highly formulaic composition of commercial music, and appreciation of artistic individuality
as opposed to conformity to current mainstream trends.
Apart from perhaps the underground rock scenes in the
pre-Mikhail Gorbachev Soviet Union, very few types of
underground music are completely hidden, however, performances and recordings may nevertheless be dicult
for outsiders to nd.
Some underground musical genres never left their nonmainstream roots, such as jagged, aggressive UK 82style hardcore punk bands like Discharge. Some underground styles eventually became mainstream, commercialized pop styles, as did for example the underground
hip hop style of the early 1980s. In the 2000s, the increasing availability of the Internet and digital music technologies has made underground music easier to distribute
using streaming audio and podcasts. Some experts in cultural studies now argue that there is no underground because the Internet has made what was underground music
1

2
Shlomo Shers philosophy for artists argues that there
are three common misconceptions about the underground": that it refers exclusively to the rave/electronica
scene; that it can be described with a vague, broad denition of anything which is not mainstream"; and the myth
that underground music is kept secret; he points out that
no band or performer exclud[es] virtually anyone or anything using secret passwords and hidden map points.
Instead, Sher claims that underground music is linked
by shared values, such as a valuing of grassroots reality over music with pre-wrapped marketing glossing it
up"; sincerity and intimacy; freedom of creative expression is valued over commercial success; art is appreciated
as deeply meaningful fashion; and the Underground difcult to nd, because the scene hides itself from less
committed visitors who would trivialize the music and
culture.

3 SEE ALSO
an important New York City underground music venue
in the 1960s and 1970s. CBGB[5] is another famous
New York City underground music venue claiming to be
Home of Underground Rock since 1973.

2 References
[1] http://www.independent.co.
uk/life-style/fashion/features/
meet-the-global-scenester-hes-hip-hes-cool-hes-everywhere-894199.
html Martin Raymond comments on the death of the
Underground and homogenisation of youth culture in this
article.
[2] April 2004 Underground Music is Free Media By
MICKEY Z.
[3] Post-Punk: A History and Examination
[4] Underground Music Podcast
[5] CBGB Claimed home of Underground Rock since 1973]

3 See also
Independent music
Underground hip hop
Underground art
Wild Side Story ran intermittently as a form of underground musical in three countries for 30 years, with teenagers Helena Mattsson and Mohombi Moupondo in a 2002 Stockholm cast.

In a Counterpunch magazine article, Twiin argues that

Underground music is free media, because by working independently, you can say anything in your music and be free of corporate censorship.[2] The genre of
post-punk is often considered a catchall category for underground, indie, or lo- guitar rock bands which initially avoided major record labels in the pursuit of artistic
freedom, and out of an 'us against them' stance towards
the corporate rock world, spreading west over college
station airwaves, small clubs, fanzines, and independent
record stores.[3] Underground music of this type is often promoted through word-of-mouth or by community
radio DJs. In the early underground scenes, such as the
Grateful Dead jam band fan scenes or the 1970s punk
scenes, crude home-made tapes were traded (in the case
of Deadheads) or sold from the stage or from the trunk
of a car (in the punk scene). In the 2000s, underground
music became easier to distribute, using streaming audio
and podcasts.[4]
A music underground can also refer to the culture of underground music in a city and its accompanying performance venues. The Kitchen is an example of what was

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